A Raven's Writing Desk A Steampunk Romance
by AiyeshaPurple
Summary: This tale concerns Alice's journey through the heart of a dystopian Wonderland, aided solely by the Mad Hatter and the enigmatic White Queen &, as Alice becomes more involved with Wonderland's internal strife, she's ever closer to the Red Queen herself...
1. Chapter 1

A Raven's Writing Desk

_A Steampunk Romance in the Heart of Wonderland_

Chapter One

_Strange how a teapot can represent at the same time the comforts of solitude and the pleasures of company._

Alice sat down gingerly at the overburdened table sitting in the middle of the clearing, wary of any of the precariously balanced dishes falling over and spilling their contents onto her already abused dress. She looked around the incongruously placed table, but it remained as empty as it was when she had first entered the space, pale and gasping from running. She still wasn't quite sure what she'd been running from, except to say that it had been an odd magenta color and in possession of far too many teeth for her liking.

Finally reassured that nothing and no one was going to emerge from any of the haphazardly stacked plates and cups, Alice reached up and snagged a relatively clean looking beer stein, then stood to be able to reach the nearest teapot. After a slight inner battle with herself about the impropriety of what she was about to do, Alice poured the tea with the utmost poise (part of which was intended to make up for the inherent wrongness of the action) into the stein, then set the teapot back on the table. This motion sent a pyramid of stacked shot glasses toppling, but since it was over the side of the table opposite from the one on which Alice was sitting, she couldn't bring herself to care.

Sitting back in her chair—then hastily straightening up again after it began to creak ominously—she brought the stein (which was now full to the brim with tea) up to her mouth and took a hearty swallow. Directly thereafter, Alice coughed violently, sputtering, and then turned to glare at the teapot. "That," she said, still sputtering, "Was not tea."

"Well of course it wasn't," said a voice from somewhere over her shoulder. "The tea is in the blue pot at the end of the table. What you just drank there was the Brandy Pot." Alice started, throwing the stein full of what she now knew to be brandy in the voice's general direction and vaulting over the table amidst the sound of crashing dishes and splashing liquid. After landing on the other side and grabbing a suitably sharp looking piece of china, Alice turned to look at who had spoken and caused her panicked flight across the crowded table.

For a moment, all she felt was a sense of relief in the fact that he wasn't wearing a speck of magenta and that all of his teeth were of the proper size and shape (she was able to discern the last fact because he was grinning rather widely at her from across the grassy expanse and now decimated tea table). After the first shock, Alice was able to determine that it was a tall, rather thin man, not more than two years older than her own six-and-twenty, possessing a rugged demeanor and an equally rugged face that was framed by shaggy blonde hair.

His dark eyes twinkled at her, dancing at some inner mirth (It couldn't be at the state of her clothes, as his were currently in similarly as bad a shape, if not worse), and in his hands rested quite simply the largest hat she'd ever seen, in such a shockingly awful shade of green that she marveled at not having seen it before. The strange man noticed Alice's pointed interest in his headgear, grinned all the wider and proceeded to do a series of acrobatic tricks with the hat before finally flinging it up into the air and allowing it to settle quite decisively on his head.

Alice recovered her senses long enough to bring the makeshift knife around to bear on the man who was now approaching her and ask in a clear, if not steady, voice: "Who are you?

The man stopped and blinked for a moment, as if bewildered by the prospect that anyone he may encounter would not already know his name. Reaching up, he removed the hat and swept it across his body in an elegant motion, back bent and leg extended to the precise degree required by the strictures of society. "Forgive me for not introducing myself immediately," the man proclaimed in a smooth baritone. "I am Adrian Theophilius Xander Reginald McAvery the Forty-Third.

"But you can call me Hatter."


	2. Chapter 2

**A Raven's Writing Desk**

_~A Steampunk Romance in the Heart of Wonderland~_

**Chapter Two**

"_Danger - if you__meet__it promptly and without flinching - you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"—Winston Churchill_

The person known as Hatter to all but his closest friends (of which he had very few) gazed speculatively at the disheveled brunette standing warily on the other side of his once perfectly prepared tea table. She was wearing what had once been a perfectly acceptable dress in a pleasant blue color, complete with one of those decorative aprons that had been making the rounds of the Queen's Court. It was now a muddy blue shambles, with the long sleeves hanging by a thread and the delicate little apron sliced every which way. What made the largest impression on him, however, was the determined expression on her young face and the sliver of china held unwaveringly in one grubby hand.

He glanced down instinctively, searching for the mark set into every subject of the Red Queen at birth, with Normals having a Heart, Bureaucrats Diamonds, Soldiers Clubs and Spies and Assassins spades, all tattooed indelibly into the right wrist of each unwilling Wonderlander. Seeing nothing, not even a blemish or a suspiciously concentrated patch of mud on the waifs pale wrist, his gaze snapped back up to her face.

Still smiling, as if the revelation that she was lacking any sort of indication that she hailed from a world not his own, and that she may, in fact, be what he was searching for, Hatter inquired in what he hoped was a suitably light tone: "And who, may I ask, are you?"

The girl's eyes relaxed slightly, as did her stance. The makeshift knife clutched in her hand did not waver from its position of readiness, but at least she looked less inclined to use it on him. After licking her lips and tossing a distinct glare at the pile of florid china that was all that remained of the Brandy Pot, she answered, "My name is Alice, Alice Liddell. Would you please be so kind as to tell me where, exactly, I am?"

Clenching his hand on the brim of the hat he still held in his gloved hand, Hatter repressed the surge of excitement that came on the heels of Alice's last words. This was no time to be celebrating, not when he still couldn't be absolutely sure, and besides, it was horribly bad form to enjoy someone else's pain and fear simply because you knew something they didn't.

Not that the news that she wouldn't be able to leave for a very long while, if ever would be in anyway comforting to the girl, but such was life. And so, with a quick inhale and a flick of his wrist, Hatter set his hat quite firmly back on top of his head and spread his arms in a grand fashion, encompassing the entirety of the wooded space.

"This, my dear, is Wonderland," he said, after which he dropped his arms and become quite serious. "And I'm afraid, Alice Liddell, that you are not going to be leaving any time soon."

As soon as the last syllable of his admittedly grim announcement landed in the air between him, Alice's stance became just as militant as it had been before, if not more so.

"What, sir, do you mean to imply?" she said, her voice very low, very steady and very clipped.

"I am saying, and I am sorry that I have to, that due to the current state of affairs, it is quite impossible for you to leave Wonderland until a very future date, if ever," Hatter replied, subtly shifting his body, attempting to make himself less of a target (though March already said he was thinner than paper and that there wasn't much to aim at even if he was facing an enemy full on).

"But this is _England_," Alice said, her brows drawing together and her fingers flexing on the shard in a mirror of Hatter's earlier movements. "There hasn't been a situation here since Napoleon, and even that was in France."

"Ah," Hatter said, his mind racing with the confirmation that this was indeed an English Alice, and that her identity was lining up more and more with the (he hated to use this term, but it was all he had available) prophecy. "My dear, you _did_ listen when I told you this was Wonderland, yes? I've never heard of England—" lies "—but I can certainly tell you that there is no such place here."

Alice's shoulders slumped, the sharp bit of crockery dropping for the first time, her head falling towards her chest before snapping back up again. Her mouth opened a few times, and then closed again almost as quickly. Hatter took advantage of her speechless state to ask, the question accompanied by a tip of his head and a slight shift in the weight of his enormous headpiece, how exactly she'd come to be here.

She stared at him for a few long moments, blinking, and then said in a rather distant voice, "Why, down the rabbit hole, of course."


End file.
